(Oct. 2) Kamala Harris’s economic plan is full of poll-tested conservative buzzwords, but this verbiage is a cheap disguise. It masks left-wing, big-government industrial policy along with a planned economy in which government picks winners and losers. It is the opposite of the “opportunity economy” that Harris claims.
Harris’s awful big-ticket proposals have earned weeks of well-deserved criticism. These combined with the Biden-Harris administration’s terrible record should make everyone fear four years of her economic stewardship.
Harris’s policies would pile debt on debt and probably produce stagflation, or simultaneous inflation and stagnation, as bad as the days of President Jimmy Carter.
These spring from Harris’s radically marxist (small ‘m’) mindset, which, she says, dictates that “everybody should end up in the same place. And since we didn’t start in the same place, some folks might need more.”
If you think everybody should end up in the same place — Harris does not mention merit or effort — you probably shouldn’t be living in the United States, much less leading it.
Harris and her campaign team recognize that candid marxist economics won’t sell well, so they hide it behind conservative vocabulary. Her plan uses “invest” 123 times, “opportunity” 37 times, and “compete” 29 times, as if she is a Ronald Reagan supply-sider. Alas, what she means by those words, to the extent she means anything, is very different from how most people use them.
Her plan doesn’t trust free people making free choices to invest or compete. Instead, it is the government that invests — by which it really means “spends” — the government that incentivizes, the government that creates opportunity, and the government that restrains and guides competition. Sometimes, Harris calls for direct government spending, and at many others, she proposes what most economists consider to be much the same thing: special tax abatements. These are government subsidies for favored groups or causes, or for those in favored groups who can afford pricey accountants to navigate all the government requirements to claim the benefits.
So, rather than getting out of the way of the private sector, Harris vows to have government “partner with the private sector,” “encourage the private sector,” or “leverage[e] federal funding” to do what her planners want. Build more homes! Restore old homes! Start new businesses! Whip state governments into shape! Modernize industries (but only “key strategic industries” approved by her commissars)! Reward workers (but only if they join unions) and reward the companies “that engage with” the right sorts of “unions and communities!”….
When the authorities give special preferences to favored industries, it is rarely efficient and it encourages rent-seeking or outright corruption. Witness the Biden-Harris administration creating only seven electric-vehicle charging stations from a $5 billion program started in 2021 and the scandalous waste of $80 billion in the Obama-Biden administration’s “clean technology” program, as exemplified by the 2011 collapse of the Solyndra company.
Even aside from its preference for government interference, the Harris plan’s economics don’t add up or comport with what individual states have shown are the best practices to promote growth and fiscal stability….. [The full column is here.]
